Diary of Paris Haute Couture

Prêt-à-rapporter: thanks to a summer of weddings, the couture shows have a relevancy never seen before, says Sarah Mower.

BY Sarah Mower |
13 July 2011

Giambattista Valli Haute Couture autumn/winter 2011

Bouchra Jarrar Haute Couture autumn/winter 2011 Photo: AFP/GETTY

The haute couture shows in Paris may have dwindled to a handful of their former numbers, but what they've lost in gilded ballrooms and dessicated socialites, they've suddenly made up for in vitality. I never thought I'd say this, but, last week, I saw clothes I can relate to - how weird! Haute couture may be a fantasia at the top of the arts of making extraordinary things, but as far as approaching anything relevant to the general stream of fashion? In 20 years, I've never felt that - until now.

It's the Summer of Weddings that's done it. For the first time in a generation, the nuptials of Europe have given haute couture a proper job to do, amongst real women - if, that is, you can define "real" as people who own diamonds and don't troll around fashion houses for free frocks. More than that, there are new designers in town, pragmatic Italians letting in fresh air from a culture which still holds onto the belief that the point of fashion is to make women feel beautiful and well-dressed. Couture now has people and occasions to think about that have nothing to do with the excesses that have been sending fashion Gaga.

Even before the shows got going, the couturier-count a fortnight ago at the wedding weekend of the year was a phenomenon in itself. Giorgio Armani made Charlene Wittstock's wedding gown, while John Galliano, disgraced though he may be, exercised his Parisian couture skills for Kate Moss. Karl Lagerfeld attended the Monaco wedding, where he'd outfitted a number of Grimaldi princesses in pastel Chanel. At his couture show fitting, I watched as a model stepped out in front of Lagerfeld for final approval. She was wearing an exquisite white knee-length dress with tufts of feather fluffing off the sleeves, constructed from swirls and rosettes, and fluttery handkerchief points of silk. It had a look emblematic of everything best about the week: high neck, long sleeves and slightly romantic, with a hip, but quietly "proper" wearability - neither too dressed up, nor too dressed down. By the time it walked the circle of the fake Place Vendôme Lagerfeld had constructed in the Grand Palais last Tuesday, that dress had the eyes of every woman in the place riveted to it.

The Dior show was a sad carnival of whackiness which sorely underlined the fact that the taste and the tenor of the era in which John Galliano was working is officially over. To make up for it, you could feel a new, unpretentious, woman-centric sensitivity moving in to take its place. The show put on by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccoli for Valentino - delicate but simple long, lace dresses and short, demure velvet coats - was romantic while avoiding any sense of the chichi. Riccardo Tisci's all-white collection for Givenchy struck the right chord, too: modernity combined with intricate beading and embroidery, in long, pure shapes.

A third lovely Italian moment came when Giambattista Valli, a Roman designer who's worked under his own name for four years, showed his first couture collection. Sometimes you wonder where designers get the
raison d'être
for the things they make, let alone find people brave enough to back their follies: no such worries here. Valli is independent, and wants to stay that way. His customers are already paying for ready-to-wear, and now want something extra, which might be the feather-and-pearl embroidered white tweed coat he sent along for his audience, amongst other targeted temptations. His pretty, young, leggy aristocratic friends lined his runway as far as the eye could see, flanked by some of their very modern mothers. There was no sense of anything other than a knowing rapport between a designer and the women he understands. I'm always happy when I see a genuine relationship like that; increasingly, I'm beginning to think that's all that matters.

It's this sense of believability which broke a barrier I've never thought could be breached in couture. Though it was spectacular watching supermodels flounce in gilded hotel salons wearing pink Valentino "lunch" suits for the delight of women with papery skin and immovable hairdos, it was a surreal piece of social history which never moved me. When it kicked into the celebrity age, my sense of alienation become fathomless as I watched couture descend into a commercial guessing-game about which actress was going to wear whose dress on what red carpet. I never thought that would change, but, amazingly, last week, it did.

...

France doesn't encourage its young designers the way we do in London, so it's been decades since a designer of the calibre of Bouchra Jarrar has emerged to redefine the idea of chic French dressing for her own generation. I love the ineffable finesse and unfussy intellectual economy of Jarrar's clothes - the way she considers cut and usefulness from every angle, and finishes seams with her signature satin bindings. I went to see her after her show in Paris last week, and she tells me working women are snapping her up in Browns in London - bravo.